


Blue Arrangements

by fluorescentgrey



Series: Lifes Rich Pageant [4]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Disabled Character, Everybody Lives, M/M, Music, Post-Canon, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24763597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescentgrey/pseuds/fluorescentgrey
Summary: Summer 2016. What would you say if I asked you to run away?
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Lifes Rich Pageant [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1466290
Comments: 19
Kudos: 88





	Blue Arrangements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lagaudiere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lagaudiere/gifts).



“This is really… grotesque,” Eddie said, “even for you.” 

They were standing on the bridge. Rather, Richie was standing and Eddie was sitting in the car with the window rolled down, because getting him out of the car was going to be a whole big production, given that Richie wasn’t sure how to put the wheelchair back together and possibly had even damaged it somehow in attempt to wedge it into the trunk. Eddie had wanted to get out of Derry as quickly as was possible, for which Richie could not necessarily blame him. He'd thought this would be a kind of two-minute reflective drive-by that they could manage without having to put the windows down, but then Eddie had been like, where is it? What do you mean? I don't see it, necessitating that Richie get out of the fucking car and point it out to him. 

“When did you do this again,” Eddie asked, sounding like he really didn’t want to know the answer. 

“Right before I went to Canada,” Richie told him. He knew Eddie probably could have guessed this, and that was probably why he'd sounded like he hadn't wanted to know. That was the high-water mark of the teen angst self-wrecking ball, he understood these days. The letters were big and bold, faded grooves in the old wood. He felt a kind of indistinct pride that twenty-four years’ worth of local couples hadn’t infringed upon the graffito. Even two decades of Kids These Days were cowed by how big and bad that love was. “Summer of ’93,” he said. 

“What were you listening to,” said Eddie from the car. 

“That tape that I made you,” Richie said, remembering the tracklist. “Before I gave it to you.” 

“Ah, yes,” Eddie said. “The ‘I don’t love you as much as I hate myself’ tape.” 

“Yeah, that one.” 

This whole town was like being in one of those sensory deprivation chambers that drove you insane within forty-five minutes. Human beings not having been designed to reckon with listening to the movements of their own machinery for very long before your brain got bored and scared and started pumping DMT. Everyone else had taken the hint and left. What was taking them so long? 

“Can we go now,” said Eddie. 

“Yeah,” Richie said, meaning it, “sure, of course.” 

\--

They didn’t speak again until they had crossed the border into New Hampshire, but Eddie found an “oldies” station, which, depressingly, was making its way through a “Nineties Power Hour.” Richie chewed his lip until it bled to keep from moaning in despair every time a Creed or TOOL or Metallica or Korn song started. He wasn't an indie purist — he’d take Soundgarden or Stone Temple Pilots any day — but silence would have been better than this. 

The first thing any of them said in an hour was, “This music sucks,” somewhat surprisingly, from Eddie, who historically would listen to almost anything without complaining. 

“Yeah,” said Richie. 

He could feel Eddie looking at him. Finally he said, “You’re scaring me.” 

“What? How?” 

“You just listened to _that_ for an hour without complaining. Without even saying a word. And then I give you the in — and you just say _yeah_?” 

They were going to have to decide where they were going soon, Richie thought, because soon they were going to get stopped short by Lake Champlain. They were going to have to decide where they were going to sleep, and there were going to be limited options, because Eddie couldn’t walk, and the jury had been out as to if he ever would again. The particulars of the damage to his spine were delineated in the paperwork, which Richie hadn’t looked at. It was in a manila file folder in Eddie’s suitcase, wedged in the trunk with the wheelchair. The wheelchair, which Richie was going to have to put back together, which was probably broken — 

“Richie,” Eddie said, “do you want to pull over?” 

“I’m fine,” Richie said. But his voice sounded kind of high and weak. “It’s fine, I’m really fine, just put on — I don’t know, static or something.” 

“Pull the fucking car over, trash mouth,” Eddie said. 

Richie did. He turned the engine off. They sat there in silence again and finally Richie put his head on the steering wheel. 

“Can you get something out of the trunk for me,” Eddie said after maybe ten minutes or an age of the earth. 

“I think I broke your wheelchair,” Richie told him. 

“Yeah, I know,” Eddie said. “I heard a crunch. You can carry me bridal style or something. No, I mean, I have an aux cord in my suitcase.” 

“ _You_ have an _aux cord_?” 

“Do you think I listen to the fucking radio?” 

\--

As they drove to the Vermont border, then south on route 91 toward Massachusetts, Eddie played the following songs: 

The Feelies, “Crazy Rhythms” from _Crazy Rhythms  
_ Sleater-Kinney, “Oh!” from _One Beat  
_ Throwing Muses, “Him Dancing” from _The Real Ramona  
_ Talking Heads, “Love —> Building on Fire” from _‘77  
_ Belle and Sebastian, “Seeing Other People” from _If You’re Feeling Sinister  
_ Silver Jews, “Blue Arrangements” from _American Water  
_ Neutral Milk Hotel, “Naomi” from _On Avery Island  
_ Elliott Smith, “In the Lost and Found” from _Figure 8  
_ Pavement, “Type Slowly” from _Brighten the Corners  
_ Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, “Hurricane” from _Admonishing the Bishops  
_ Blur, “You’re So Great” from self-titled  
The Beta Band, “I Know” from _The Three E.P.s  
_ R.E.M., “Strange Currencies” from _Monster_  
Spiritualized, “Stay With Me” from _Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space  
_ The Brian Jonestown Massacre, “Miss June ’75” from  _Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request_

This last song was the best ever written about cunnilingus, by Richie’s estimation. When you weren’t listening to it, it might have been funny how the first half which was really some of the best romance ever was juxtaposed against this detailed fantasy about eating pussy. It might also have been funny that Eddie had chosen this one. When you were listening to it, everything made absolute sense. You were the acid disaster kneeling on the dingy desert motel carpet looking up at the object of your… _affections_ seemed limited and limiting. Just the object— the object of your. The object of you. And the light was coming in through the blinds across this person, illuminating them by beloved pieces. Fractured planes of light and dark. And Matt Hollywood was singing, _she and I are gonna live forever…_

“Are you trying to tell me something?” Richie asked when it was over. 

“Well,” Eddie said, “I can’t feel my dick, so there’s really no point there, and I’m not sure, logistics-wise, how I could, you know, for you, but what I am saying is, I think I want to leave my wife.” 

\--

The only hotel on Route 9 between Amherst and Northampton with any vacancy was the one they had stayed at together for a single night in 1995, though it was under new management and had a fresh coat of paint and even a nice set of lawn furniture outside under the awning for those who might hypothetically want to watch the summer sunset over the strip malls and cornfields. Richie had indeed broken the wheelchair, so he was obliged to carry Eddie inside. “Do you think this could be some kind of evil purgatorial bardo,” Eddie asked him, wiggling around uncomfortably in his arms like a big stupid fish. “Do you think we’re here to reckon with our past mistakes?” 

Richie kicked the door open. He put Eddie on the bed and helped him sit up. At least it wasn’t the exact same room, or if it was, at least it looked different. 

“Could you fold down the bedspread,” Eddie asked him, “please.” 

Richie did. “Past mistakes being,” he recalled, “the time you fucked me for ninety-four seconds and then stopped and told me you couldn’t do it?” 

Eddie glared at him. “You know I have hip flexor issues,” he said. But his ears were red at the tips of them. 

“I’m not mad,” Richie said. He wasn’t and he hadn’t been, even at age twenty, and the truth was that he hadn’t really thought he could do it either, because it had been really a lot, way too much, maybe half again as much feeling as could be contained inside his gangly, pimply, sweaty, awful body. “But that is what happened last time we were here.” 

“I _did_ get you off,” Eddie retorted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Didn’t I?” 

“You did! Twice! I said I wasn’t mad.” 

He sat down on the edge of the bed. He thought maybe he should put his hand on Eddie’s knee or something, except that Eddie wouldn’t be able to feel it. 

“Richie,” Eddie said, treading quite lightly, “you’re acting weird.” 

“How am I acting weird?” 

“You’re not making fun of me or saying anything crass and disgusting! You haven’t — ” he wracked his brain — “since I woke up! And you listened to that horrible music for over an hour today! You’re acting like a shell of yourself!” 

A sharp and jagged angry bolt went through him, white-hot, scorching. “Maybe, you know, and this is just an idea, could it possibly have something to do with everything that fucking happened over the last two weeks? Could it possibly maybe be related in any way to your getting stabbed through the chest with — whatever that was — not to mention — ” 

Already it was kind of softly slipping away. Like sand through the hourglass… 

“You know what I mean,” he finished, lamely, not even really knowing himself, anymore. 

Eddie studied him. Once they had known each other’s faces by heart, Richie remembered. “I can’t do anything for you if you won’t tell me how you feel,” he said after a long time. 

So this was what he had meant by the purgatorial bardo. “I can’t do anything for you if you won’t tell me what you want,” Richie told him. 

“Fine,” Eddie said. “I think we should drive to California. Now you.” 

Richie enumerated the points on his fingers: “I love you, I’ve loved you since we were kids, when I thought you were gonna die I think a piece of my heart died, and it hasn’t really come all the way back on yet. So I think you maybe have to give me some time.” 

Eddie blinked at him. “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.” 

\--

They aimlessly flipped through TV channels, absently listening to the likely-adulterous couple in the room next door fucking, feeling like fugitives in a TV cop show, and finally Richie fell asleep. He woke up again just after two in the morning feeling wide awake and bright, quite clear, and he tossed and turned for a while, slipping in and out of dreams which seemed so real and vivid and sharp that they might just as easily have been memories: 

“I really mean it,” Eddie said. “What are we going to do now?” 

They were sitting on the UMass crew docks down by the Connecticut River, watching the ice float on the deep, dark water in the bright blue day. There was a joint in Richie’s pocket and he really wanted to smoke it, but this seemed like one of those occasions where you would want to be sober for posterity. In another pocket he had his tape player and a cassette of R.E.M.’s _Murmur_ , and he was thinking about just making Eddie listen to “Sitting Still,” even though he definitely knew that song because R.E.M. was about the only band he could identify by name. 

“You could transfer to UMass,” Richie told him, knowing this was wishful thinking. 

“Hmm,” Eddie said. He was very concerned that they were trespassing. He kept looking around vigilantly. 

“Or we could just talk to each other on the phone now,” Richie said. “I mean, for real.” 

“Okay,” Eddie said, “I’d like that,” even though he went back to New York and never called. For his part, Richie never called either. Sometimes he went to the payphone in the library and just stood there, twirling a quarter between his fingers until he dropped it and it rolled and he was obliged to chase it because he was so broke. 

“You know what I think,” Richie said. 

“Literally never,” Eddie lied. “I never know what you’re thinking.” 

Richie ignored him. “I think fate will drag us back together,” he said. 

Eddie groaned and buried his face in his hands. 

“Again and again,” Richie went on. “I can see it! I think we’re like — ” 

“ — don’t say it — ” 

“ — like stink and shit, Eds.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie yelled, and punched him, kind of hard, actually, so that later there was a little bruise. In his dorm room, once Eddie had left to head home after a very heated makeout session in the car in a vacant trailhead parking lot halfway to Sunderland, Richie put on R.E.M.’s _Lifes Rich Pageant,_ lit up the joint from the pocket of the duck coat, and attempted for several hours to hammer through his own thick skull that it didn’t really matter what happened because right now he felt so good; so on fire with life, the way a tree must feel in the spring, throwing himself in a kind of primordial summoning dance around the tiny filthy room to the tune of “Just a Touch” — _I’m so young, I’m so goddamn young…_

\--

At seven AM, he was unceremoniously yanked out of all the psychedelic reverie like a used teabag, because the alarm on the dresser was going off, and Eddie was saying, “Richie, Richie, Richie — ” 

Everything was bleary and his mouth tasted like mothballs. Massachusetts, and they were both alive. “What?” 

Eddie’s face was bright and elated. “I moved my toe,” he said.

\---

\--

-

**Author's Note:**

> this piece was written for lagaudiere in grateful acknowledgement of their donations to organizations on the front line of the racial justice movement right now. i'm doing an [ongoing fundraising drive](https://yeats-infection.tumblr.com/post/620033047264378880/ok-everybody-i-hope-youve-seen-my-post-from-last) to support racial justice organizations and protestors - if you'd like to take part, and i hope you will, please give and message me with proof (on tumblr or at fgreyfx @ gmail) and i will write you something. 
> 
> the title and summary lyric come from [this tune by the silver jews.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLDE_pz1xf4)  
> [BJM's "miss june '75"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFoop72chM8)


End file.
